Interview with Phil Scarpelli of Brevard Family Partnership/Brevard C.A.R.E.S.

Prevent Child Abuse Florida Project Coordinator Heather Jones interviews Brevard Family Partnership President and CEO Phil Scarpelli.

Brevard Family Partnership is a community-based care lead agency contracted with the Department of Children and Families.

Brevard C.A.R.E.S. is a non-profit organization that helps prevent child abuse and neglect by providing resources to strengthen families so that children may remain safely at home.

This episode was recorded on January 19, 2023.

Transcript

Introduction: 

Welcome to the Pinwheel Podcast, Hope for Florida’s Families. In this episode, Prevent Child Abuse Florida’s Project Coordinator, Heather Jones, interviews Brevard Family Partnership President and CEO, Phil Scarpelli. 

Heather: 

Welcome, everybody, to another Pinwheel Podcast! For today, we have our guest, Phillip Scarpelli, he’s from Brevard Family Partnership and Brevard Family Partnership is a community-based care agency that you might be familiar with. But today we’re going to talk about not only their general operations but specifically the Brevard CARES branch of their agency. So, Phil, can you tell us a little bit about that?

Phil: 

Yes, thank you, Heather, I’m more than happy to share with you. You know, Brevard Cares, in large part, is a core part of the lead agency’s, what we like to call, system of care model design. And CARES has been around for quite a few years. It was one of the things early birthed by the original CEO back in the day. I came aboard four years ago and one of the things that attracted me to this particular lead agency, and in particular, that which Brevard Family Partnership prides itself, is its integration of our CARES model. It is a part of our diversion and prevention efforts and in reaching out and connecting and collaborating with the community and really working upstream. I mean, people for years – I’ve been in this industry for 30-35 years – for years, people always talk about primary prevention, then we had to tag the word along: “what’s true primary prevention?” and stuff like that. What we like to say is: this model compliments our relentless pursuit of going upstream and working with families that are at risk. So when you think about true primary prevention, you don’t necessarily think about breaking a cycle, you’re thinking about preventing the cycle, right? 

Heather: 

Mhm!

Phil: 

And hopefully that perpetuates generationally. The CARES model is one that prides itself in a high-fidelity wrap-a-round. So, you have a team of technically savvy people and the most technically savvy thing they do is engage families, right? Meet them where they’re at. There are a lot of sub-parts of what CARES does when families are referred to it, but the primary thing is engaging them and meeting them where they’re at and realizing that people, and particularly adults we’re talking about, are the products of their own life experiences. So, remember the days we talked about being “trauma informed,” well now the buzz is “I’m responsive.” So, the difference is that we’re jumping forward and saying it’s good to be aware what trauma is and its impact, but how are we responding to it? And how do we no longer add fuel to that trauma? But rather decelerate its tendency to progress and consume people in a way that is less productive and sometimes – often times – maladaptive, right? So, CARES is, you know, a model program. By the way, we’ve replicated it for other CBCs in Florida, and we’re replicating it as far as Alaska and several other states around the nation. We’re proud because during the family first preservation and service act, we’re seeing the demand for best practice models being integrated into all kinds of systems of care. Our CARES model is predicated on a coordinator, it’s predicated on having participants engage to include folks that have lived experience working with these families – engaging them, meeting them where they’re at and understanding the situation that have brought them to our concern.  And what we hope to do at the very end of the day is to leave them in a far better place than when we received them. We leave them with a sense of hope and confidence and to have tools to work with children, and many of them are working with children that have special needs, and many of them are families that have a variety of challenging conditions, to include adversity and environment and backgrounds. As we all know, what plagues the child welfare system is that pretty much is at the front door is mental illness, substance abuse, and domestic violence, as we know. 

So, CARES is the antidote, right? Let me tell you something, you know, since its inception, I think probably by know we are above 3,500 families that have been diverted from the formal system because we met them upstream, we engaged them with compassion, and trauma responsiveness, and we help with a strength-based model for them to determine their destiny, their desire, their hope for independence from formal systems. It’s really a beautiful thing to watch, about everything of the initial engagement, from the environmental assessment to find where this family is coming from, from the relationship between parent and child, and vis versa, and to understand whether there is a natural support system or one that needs to be developed with them. So, I don’t want to get into too much of the minutia, but it’s something that is at the core of who we are and what we’re about, and it’s very forward-thinking. We’re very proud of it. 

Heather: 

Yeah, that sounds wonderful! Love the focus on the prevention aspect as far as actually meeting the families where they are and, you know, not waiting until something actually happens but recognizing signs that something could happen, and you can help them before that happens. But I would love to back-track a little and talk about what you said about a “strength-based approach.” I’d love for you to give a definition to that and as to how that’s part of your focus. 

Phil: 

So, first and foremost, those that are a part of the team engages the family, goes through a very rigorous and lengthy training with the intent to deliver within the fidelity of the design, right? Number one. Number two, they get certified, they get coached and consulted relentlessly. And then every session, we have a lot of sessions that are very closely monitored and evaluated for depth and richness and content and all that kind of stuff. So, when you can do all that, what you’re doing is engaging families to develop a relationship with them so that they’re comfortable enough to reveal, expose, and share their background, their present circumstance, and hopefully to the point – so like – “what I really want for my family, right, or for my child,” and when they get that transparent then what you do is you get to begin that exploration and that assessment of their family system, you know, if you will, and that constellation of people who are involved in that life. Really, you know, when you think about strength-based, in some situations, you have to look hard and deep for it. In some, it’s very, very self-evident. So, with that combination of assessment through engagement and evaluation, you can depict what are the individual strengths of every member of that family that can be built upon. You know, maybe the old-school, that 80/20 theory, you know if 80% of the time you know 20% of the problem, we did the reverse and what you do is you build on things that have been working, right? You expand on them, and you massage them, and you teach them ways to use them more effectively, while removing the static in their lives, if you will, and the things that cloud their better judgement. You know, I work in the industry of child welfare and particularly child abuse prevention, I really have never met a family or adult or a couple that have ever woken up in the morning and said “you know what? I think I’m gonna harm little Janie or little Johnny.” It’s not a plan, it’s not a strategy, it’s not intense, it’s really a by-product of a lot of circumstances that are all adverse, right? As a product of those adverse conditions, some of us develop coping skills, some of us don’t, and without the coping skills and the supports in a moment of crisis, rash decisions occur, right? Very fundamental to the human behavior. So, when you think about how we do what we do, it’s really in that nuance of how the folks are being engaged to the point of very transparent and revealing dialogue between our professionals and the family members. That is really the essence of what it’s about. You could have a model program, but you better have the right people, who are willing to cross that mid-line of engagement, and who are willing to hear and listen to things with a bias that has been put in check. Because all human beings walk the earth with bias, but you have to put all those biases aside to then thoroughly and respectfully engage the other party. Because when they sent that willingness and openness to understand, rather than to be understood, “this is what you have to keep this family together, and otherwise you’re going to go into the system! And then someone else is gonna control your life!” Well, that’s really backwards, ain’t it? That’s what our people do. These care coordinators are amazing people and they all have very skilled backgrounds and training, and degrees, that really support their understanding of normal and abnormal child development, and then family system theories, stuff like that, and a lot of environmental awareness about the resources and how to optimally leverage them so that when you find strengths how do you enhance the strengths. It’s not a resource that we possess, that we bring in that resource and vice versa. 

Heather: 

I would love you to spend some more time on talking about how they engage the community, like you said, how your staff kind of go out and get to know a family and reach out to them before a child comes to the attention to the department. Can you talk more about why that is so important?

Phil: 

Yeah, I think what is happening in our system of care, that happens just organically, is that – and it didn’t require the help of a program, per say – it’s really about a coming together of professionals who realize that we can internally develop and integrate not only a culture, but a program or service designed to be delivered. But that is only part of a successful model of working with families. So, what we have in our organization, in every facet and every division of our organization, is that we have people who are community ties to the resources we have available to them. There are so many resources that are here. People in the industry often say, “there isn’t enough resources,” I challenge that notion and I would say that I think there may be enough resources, we just aren’t leveraging them right. Sometimes we’re not prescriptively aligning it to the need, defining the need, and aligning the resource. You know the old days in the difference between like a domestic violence situation, for example, batterers intervention and anger management. Well, that was different modalities for different purposes and quite frankly the underlying cause or diagnosis were very, very different. There were similarities but if you don’t know how to see that clearly through an appropriate assessment, internal, and then align that with the appropriate service, external, then you’re really going into a surgical procedure with all the wrong instruments! We have a community alliance in our county, it’s called “Together in Partnership” that has a lot of resources that come together to share the innovations, the benchmarks that are being achieved because of their innovation, the availability of resources or there lack of, and when there is a lack of, how do you navigate in a way that will deal with a need immediately, because timeliness is of the essence, right? I always equate how we do our prevention work to a medical model. You don’t go to the doctor when the finger is gangrene, if you see a cut or a bruise, then you address it immediately because for so many reasons, when we delay a response and a sense of urgency, the situation magnifies. The complexities in treatment magnify. The duration of healing magnifies, right? So, it’s the same thing, that parallels to family situations and protecting our kids. So, our leveraging of the resources, we have a lot in our community, like our CAPTA program, our child abuse prevention taskforce that gets together and it’s a very robust group of people from in or around behavioral healthcare, child welfare, even the education system, and DJJ – you name the different stakeholders in child welfare issues. They come together, this is a wonderful county, by the way. It’s a very close-knit county, it’s a very familiar county, it’s a long county that takes almost two hours to go from head to toe, but people know each other. They know how to resource each other. They do come together, there are ongoing meetings in our community that collaborate on all social welfare issues, whether it’s housing, whether it’s substance abuse, whether it’s mental illness and the like. So, we have a seat at most – if not all – of these tables to be a participant in strategy and problem solving and networking the resources so people know it’s availability, how to access it, what are our expectations, and ultimately,” who is the contact person and how soon can I get ahold of them,” right? So, part of that assessment, what you’re asking, really is a very active state of being for our staff here at Brevard Family Partnership and our CARES program. It’s an integral part, being ready and prepared to meet that family as far upstream as you can. Of course, sometimes, things come knocking on our door, when things have escalated to the point at which it’s crisis mode. And we have MRTs, that’s Mobile Response Teams, that of course are very effective, they are very skilled and trained. In fact, if I may divert just for a second, we are partnered, we have MOUs and contracts with our local law enforcement in a few of the cities, and we hope to replicate in all the cities in Brevard County, where, for example, law enforcement goes out for a domestic situation. We’re now pairing them up with a clinically minded, trained coordinator of the mobile response team to partner and go out there. And once the assessment of the law enforcement deems the situation relatively safe for engagement, that is who leads the dialogue and engagement of the person in crisis! Isn’t that a beautiful thing? Can you imagine the old-school idea – well, I guess it’s still present-school – but where laws enforcement comes in there and what is their duty? What’s their charge? It’s not about being trauma responsive, it’s not about engaging and assessing the situation at hand from a behavioral or cognitive sense, or a substance abuse lens, it’s really about deescalating, safety, and ultimately the only interventions, if you think about it, is a legal intervention. And the person in crisis? Nine times out of ten, that exacerbates the situation! So, these law enforcement guys are just wonderful partners. Some that I just met recently are from out of state where they run similar models and they see how effective it really is. I remember having a conversation with the local chief about the integration of MRTs, mobile response teams, and he says, “you know how good it can get?” and I said, “I do.” And he said, “well let me tell ya, there have been callouts where we don’t go out, we send the MRT out, because we know the situation prior when we make a telephonic assessment, like is the person stable? ‘Yeah, they just uh- something’s going on’ and then you can get someone who can deescalate and engage and then offer them hope like ‘hey, we can get you resources,; and no one walks away in handcuffs. No one’s going to the ER, and no one is hopping into a cop car and headed off to the local jail.” Because you know, once that stuff happens, you just set the clock back a lot, didn’t you? Because they’re gonna go through the ER, they’re gonna go to the jail, and then what they really needed now gets delayed. The family suffers, the community suffers, frankly, and when children are involved, they suffer. So, that’s my short answer, how do you like that?

Heather:

 (laughs) “The short answer,” love that! Yeah, it’s great to hear about the mobile response teams, that’s a wonderful thing that I had no idea was a part of your program. That’s awesome to learn about. So, is there any plan to expand that mobile response idea into other counties?

Phil: 

So, our jurisdiction is Brevard County. But Brevard CARES is a “pay it forward,” philosophically driven organization. So, where we can offer training and insights, we do. In fact, we’ve been doing that with our CARES wrap-a-round model. We’ve been offering it in other counties around the state, from Volusia to Hillsborough, and so forth, and we want to offer that. So, right now, we’ve got two formal arrangements with two different police departments, here in the county. We would hope to replicate it over time. Of course, it does require some money, and personnel. Post-COVID, it’s really tough, still, to get people back. They are coming back, but it's trickling in. We hope to see that grow in 2023. I do want to see the replication. Our designs and our wishes are to be open to those opportunities. And we love to do the collaboration, right? Sometimes it’s a blending of resources and funds and manpower and the whole nine yards. That’s what makes it work, right? 

Heather: 

Are there any more upcoming community activities that you want to talk about? Any events that parents and families can get involved with?

Phil: 

First and foremost, what we have been doing for quite some time and will continue to do – and I’m hoping to grow it further – is… I’m not too sure if you’re familiar with the “open table” model. It’s a family table setting where we bring people from the community to engage an individual or a family around issues that they’re struggling with. The community then becomes the support network. They’re called “friends,” and then you have the person at the table who is the member of interest and what we decided to do with this model, was to engage the faith community. Brevard County has well over 460 independent churches! Is that not a resource to be reckoned with, right? Let me tell you, I’ve worked in thirteen different counties throughout central Florida in my blessed 30 years in Florida since I came from New York, and I’ve never seen more giving, more generous, and more altruistic people than I see here in Brevard County. In particular, in the churches, and the faith leaders that step up and say “How can we help you? You’re doing God’s work! That’s our duty!” You know? They’re saying facetiously, you know, “we want to put you out of business!” in this child protection stuff. And I said “I dare you! I challenge you!” You know? And so, we get together and what I offer them – and we have a few churches that are working with us on this – I say to them: “I want to bring to you skills, tools, training, and you find the people who are willing and able to commit to a family for a year.” In the open table model, the commitment is a year for all the members of the table to surround that family with a relentless willingness to listen to their plight. Understand it, but again, meeting them where they’re at. And hearing what their desire for self-sufficiency and independence looks like, right? And it shouldn’t be anything purposed by us, it should be their ideal, in that which they buy into and strive towards. So, the model requires members of congregations to commit to a year, to sit at this table, to be delegated an assignment of responsibility and to be facilitated by a trained facilitator. Redo the training, they do the training for a second-generation trainer, and they lead that family and that group. It’s really beautiful because where else do you know for people to gather around in a compassionate way? And they have community! It’s ingrained in who they are and what their about. And I think about the 460 plus churches and I’m thinking “it’s an endless supply of-!” It’s not that easy, right? To just go out and knock on doors and say “hey, come join us!” But it takes a lot of relationship building and engagement and a lot of convincing that they will be trained, they will have consultation, and they will have the oversight provided by our organization, Brevard Family Partnership. And We’ve been doing it. We have about six tables active right now, working with families way up stream, these people have not knocked on the child welfare door, but they’re struggling. By the way, members don’t have to be teachers, doctors, psychologists, just people who know their community and the resources in their community. And each one individually charged with – when that issue comes up, you make that connection. You’re making the connection and bringing the connection. It’s like a quasi-congregational-surrogate case worker if you will. You know what I mean? And so, it’s a really neat thing to see. What I do, I created a community in faith liaison, a person who is the point of contact for every one of these churches. If you’ve ever operated or developed a mentoring program or a volunteer program, you need a point of contact, because those people need a resource to go to when they’re at odds or confused or needing additional support and stuff like that. So that contact person is a full-time person who is working with every one of these tables. They’ve facilitated the training, they provide the online consultation, and they do the check-ins to make sure things are moving forward. Now I know I say with the members at the table that they have a year commitment, but if you mitigate a lot of the issues and mitigate a lot of the conditions that brought them to concern in six months, so be it! Right? But we want them one year because we realize that most people who have lived in challenging circumstances, it took years to get there. So, sometimes a few months ain’t gonna cut it, right? That’s something we’re really proud of, because unlike the early days in Florida when I was here in child welfare you would call a local pastor or someone from the synagogue and say “hey, do you wanna help us out?” And what often happens is they have a certain point in time where they help agencies like ours, whether it’s a foster kid, or children who are simply at risk, like at the holiday times. They help us with drives and stuff like that. Which is wonderful, a blessing! Wait until I tell you what our Christmas was like. But, it's a wonderful blessing but it’s one point in time. I want to build a relationship with this community, I want them to feel as a stakeholder who is just as important as my role or anybody else on my team, to be vested in families in need. When communities come together like that, it’s wonderful. We’ve got each other’s back, supporting each other. These tables are growing and really becoming the way of the future because one think I always tell senators and representatives I meet with around the block year after year is that we may have gotten money through a community based care lead agency contract, but what we compliment financially and with resource base that is in kind of the money we get and then in addition to the money we get is our communities investment with the very families we’re charged to work with and beyond, right? I have to say, after two decades of privatization, no one’s come out with a definitive stamp thing “this is proven and the way of the future!” Well, the statistics show that Florida’s privatized system yields far better return on many an outcome. Adoptions, graduations, reunification rates, duration of time in care, by far than any other state in our nation. So, there’s something to be said for those stats. It’s largely because we’ve been given the privilege and liberties to lead local systems of care for the people, by the people, built by this very community. Our agency, Brevard Family Partnership, it’s real that it’s a DVA and it’s really Community Based Care of Brevard, because over 18 years ago it was this community that put it together. It was staples of the community, and then it was taken over by the original CEO, and then the leadership team, a board of directors, and so forth. And it thrives today. And we’re actually, by capacity, a workforce that has doubled since its inception, our revenue base has doubled since its inception, and it’s because of the successful engagement of this community. 

Heather: 

Reaching out to those community hubs and kind of getting them on board with what your mission is, is just an awesome way to reach people. I know that Safe Families for Florida is another faith-based organization here in Tallahassee that we rely on. Yeah, definitely partnering with schools and community centers, places where the people already gather, it does a lot of the work for you. So, with Child Abuse Prevention month coming up, I have to ask, do you guys have anything planned? You know, community events, parties, you know, what’s going on in the community that you’re excited for?

Phil: 

When we do our pinwheels drive, if you will, it’s really – because we have several key designations throughout our county that we go as an agency with to engage the other stakeholders, particularly law enforcement. And our sheriff in our county, like many sheriffs in Florida, they’re iconic people. So, they meet us out there, you know, law enforcement, community organizations, all the entities that actually serve families, and what’s wonderful is that we plant the pinwheels together. Then we have this community moment – and I go to everyone at the venue, by the way – my calendar is just crazy that time of year, but I want to be at those venues because there’s a could things I want to do. I want to thank partners and I want to nurture the relationships with them and let them know how valuable they are, because this child that we’re talking about is all of our children, right? It’s all of our children, we share that. When we come together, it’s just really nice. Part of it is this pomp and circumstance that you want media to show and see we’re all veterans at this. We get together and look at each other, our fellowship body looks at one another and we say, “you know, we do this all together every day.” And you know I think Brevard is over 600,000 in population and I think in the next five years could tip a million people here and – a lot of growth here, by the way – post COVID, a lot of people are coming down to Florida, you know? So, I think “wow!” You know? Exciting, exciting to get more growth and development for our state. It’s wonderful, but with that comes families in need. So, when we look around and realize what’s coming our way, it’s encumbered upon us to look at these very relationships in that lens of fellowship, realizing for the greater good of what we’re doing, we’re going to impact lives and we’re going to impact generations. That’s something that keeps me going every day. 

Heather: 

Definitely, yes. That’s a very good way of putting it. So, Phil, we’ve talked a lot about Brevard Family Partnership, and the Brevard CARES branch of the agency, I was just wondering though if we could talk a little bit about how your professional life and career path has led you to this position now that you’re in, with helping families in Brevard and you know, how did you get here? 

Phil: 

That’s a great question, I don’t know if you have the time, my friend! (laughs) But in all honesty, I sleep with great humility and humbleness in my heart because I can honestly tell you that I did not have a road map to where I am today. The path opened for me. Maybe it was divine, who knows? But I have to tell that like everyone on God’s earth, you know, I’ve had my losses in life and traumas and stuff like that. I lost my mom as a child and grew up with a father who was a wonderful and brilliant man, but he was raising seven kids by himself, for a while there, you know? So, the sibling group was very profoundly impacting who I was on a compassionate level. We lost something near and dear and I think it really heightened our – even as a young age, at a young age – it heightened our sense of compassion for one another, and it tends to resonate. The person you see before you is only one in seven of us, right? One in seven, and we’re all the same kind of person. Ready, caring people who when good things happen, we want to pay it forward. So, that feels like my journey. I’ve had great mentors, both academically and professionally. My background is in a clinical area early on in behavioral health and I crossed over into child welfare as I came to Florida to see if I could take all of those clinical skills and integrate them into a social welfare model that was serving families in a government-based system. And then it transitioned into a privatized system, and I said “oh God, this is like a renaissance! He’s calling me, he’s calling me to contribute to this period of renaissance in Florida!” So, when you have the passion and you have the drive and you have a vision, people who were leaders before me saw that and encouraged me to take this journey and path. Slowly, I elevated myself to a point where – so think about this, right – I got my undergraduate degree in clinical psych in 1984. That’s right, schools were around then! And I remember thinking a day that I wanted to heal one child at a time. And here I am today with the dubious pleasure and privilege to develop systems that could heal generations of children. That’s a blessing, it’s a gift, and I do not take it for granted. What I do is I surround myself with a lot of talented people. The leadership in this agency is second-to-none, they have been phenomenal to work with. We learn from each other every day, and what ignites me most is my reflection and story-telling that I like to share with my colleagues about the children and youth that I work with in the early years of my career in residential group year placements and psychiatric facilities, and the like, and foster homes, right? And it was those experiences that taught me, through the grace of God, it couldn’t be any one of us without the kinds of supports and the kinds of things that make communities and families thrive, I want that’ I really want that. I think he speaks through me and I have to appreciate that and share it and pay it forward. So, when I lead, as a leader, I don’t care anymore about being the smartest guy in the room. I want to be the most compassionate guy in the room. And I want my people who serve the people to know that I have compassion for them and I hope that they know that I do, that they see it. That they pay that forward and cascade it down to the families that they touch. That is the difference. You could have the greatest design and academic, designing systems of cares, reaching people, but if you don’t connect with them, the very intentional relationship that is unequivocally based on a lack of bias, if you will, and an unconditional acceptance of who they are and from where they come. It’s right where we began! I don’t know how long we’ve been talking, but if you wind the talk back, I start out by saying meeting them where they are. I meet my staff where they are, I want them to meet our stakeholders and those we serve where they are and begin building that relationship. Everything will follow. That’s what drives me. 

Heather: 

Very nice! Thank you so much for sharing, Phil! Yeah, I like that you looped it back around to where we started. (laughs) Talking about meeting them where they are, and I really do love that phrase, “I don’t want to be the smartest in the room, I want to be the most compassionate in the room.” Because I think t hat’s definitely something of great value that I – frankly, that I wish a lot more people thought that way. But it’s been great talking with you, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about Brevard Family Partnership and Brevard CARES, and it was great to have you! 

Outro: Thank you for listening to The Pinwheel Podcast, hope for Florida’s families. To contact us or learn more, visit PreventChildAbuseFL.org.